George P. Landow

Hyper/Text/Theory

From the Publisher: In his widely acclaimed book Hypertext George P. Landow described a radically new information technology and its relationship to the work of such literary theorists as Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. Now Landow has brought together a distinguished group of authorities to explore more fully the implications of hypertextual reading for contemporary literary theory.

Hypermedia and literary studies

From the Publisher: The essays in Hypermedia and Literary Studies discuss the theoretical and practical opportunities and challenges posed by the convergence of hypermedia systems and traditional written texts. They range from the theory and design of literary hypermedia to reports of actual hypermedia projects from secondary school to university and from educational and scholarly to creative applications in poetry and fiction.

The rhetoric of hypermedia: some rules for authors

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY that employs electronically linked blocks of words and images requires rhetorical and stylistic rules different from those for one employing physically isolated pages set in a fixed sequence. After discussing the reader’s need for arrival, departure, and navigation information in hypermedia, the essay examines various system solutions to these needs and then proposes rules of hypermedia rhetoric concerning the creation of overview or directory files, placement and labeling of link markers, and relation of visual to verbal information.

Relationally encoded links and the rhetoric of hypertext

More than two years’ work on designing, writing, editing, and linking documents in Context32 [Land86], the first course employing Intermedia developed at Brown University’s IRIS (Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship), has provided valuable experience of hypertext and hypermedia systems. Context32, which contains more than a thousand text and graphic files joined by approximately 1300 links, appears the most ambitious implementation thus far of a full hypertext and hypermedia system intended for multiple users. Members of the development team at IRIS have previously described various aspects of Intermedia’s object-oriented programming [Meyr86], general design EMeyr85, Yank87a, Yank87b1, and educational goals [Land871. This paper presents conclusions about what works best at each end of a hypertext path or linkway and proposes that, like other forms of discourse, hypertext requires systems of conjunctive and other relational devices.

Hypertext in literary education, criticism, and scholarship

After describing the English course and the particular hypertext system that supports it at Brown University, the essay surveys the materials on Context32, that part of the system devoted to literature courses, and narrates how a student uses the system during a typical session in our electronic laboratory/classroom. Next, it presents evidence of the effects of such information technology on student performance, after which it examines the relation of hypertext to contemporary literary theory, in particular to the ideas of decentering, intertextuality, and anti-hierarchical texts. Finally, it explains the continuing developments of Intermedia.

Popular fallacies about hypertext

Some writers on educational hypertext appear to be reinventing the wheel, and others insist on using a square or polygonal one when perfectly good round, rubber ones have been available for several years. Many dogmatic pronouncements one encounters at conferences and in published discussions of hypertext incorporate a few popular fallacies. Having taught with a hypertext system for four years, I have become convinced that some of these fallacies arise, quite understandably, because so few people have worked with growing, expanding bodies of hypertext materials that students actually use and to which they contribute.

The Digital Word: Text-Based Computing in the Humanities

From the Publisher: The sixteen essays collected in The Digital Word continue Landow and Delanys exploration of the new fluid, digitized text begun in Hypermedia and Literary Studies (1991), which focused on the linking of text, graphics, or sound into structures typically bound within a single computer or local-area network. This book explores the larger realm of the knowledge infrastructure where texts are received, reconstructed, and sent over global networks. It covers text management, textual resources and communication, and working with texts. In their introductory essay, Landow and Delany address the impact of such developments as the dematerialization of text (which exists only as a piece of code) and the manipulability of text-based computing (searches, editing, comparison, and analysis), which shifts the balance of power from text to reader. Digital texts; the law, sources, distribution, and management of texts; and the need for new procedures that will make explorations of the boundless universe of text more effective are touched on as well. Current examinations of text management include the FreeText Project and personal information retrieval, a taxonomy of text-management software, and markup systems (including a clear, authoritative discussion of Standard Generalized Markup Languages). Essays in the next section take up such disparate aspects of textual resources and communications as corpus-based linguistics, networked library services, personal docuverses for the individual scholar, and the new forms of scholarly communications created by electronic mail and electronic conferencing. A concluding section on working with texts surveys what has been variously calledcomputer criticism, computer-aided criticism, and electronic text analysis in relation to textual editing, literary interpretation, and our practice of reading and writing in an electronic age. George P. Landow is Professor of English and Art at Brown University. Paul Delany is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University.

Where's the hypertext: The Dickens Web as a system-independent hypertext

This paper reports the comparative evaluations by fifteen experienced hypertext users of three hypertext systems (Intermedia, Interleaf WorldView, and Storyspace) to carry out both simple information retrieval and more complex cognitive tasks. In contrast to, approaches that compare hypertext versions of print documents to print documents, our research began with materials originally created for an electronic environment—the award-winning Dickens Web. The evaluators’ detailed narratives, which show that hypertext documents can exist independently of specific hypertext systems, also suggest points that designers of hypertext systems and hypertext authors must take into account. These points include the value of fulltext search vs. link following, and the importance of content expertise. Finally, we report on the importance of singlevs. hi-directional thinking, multiple linking from a single point, and web views.

Course Assignments Using Hypertext

AbstractThe Intermedia system developed by Iris at Brown University has supported the teaching of four separate English courses and provided important experience with designing out-of-class assignments for use with such hypertext systems. To derive the greatest educational advantage from hypertext, course assignments should exploit its intrinsic emphases upon making connections between blocks of text, modifying distinctions between reader and writer, student and teacher, and encouraging collaborative learning. The following article examines both introductory and more advanced assignments and provides examples of how students responded to such exercises.

Creating hypermedia materials for English literature students

As part of an on—going effort to develop software appropriate for university scholar s and teachers, Brown Universitys Institute for Research in Information and Scholarshi p (IRIS), with partial funding by the Annenberg/CPB Project, is collaborating wit h members of the English Department in a three—year research project designed t o introduce a computer component into an introductory English literature course . The materials for the course have been created using software called Intermedia which has been developed at IRIS . This software, which runs on networked workstations wit h high—resolution displays, is also being used to create materials for a plant cell biology course. Both courses, with the computer component in place, will be taught in Semester II (January through May) 1987 .